We have a Playstation 2, but I haven’t really used it very much. At first I liked some of the fast paced shoot 'em up or racing games but in general I found that instead of relaxing me, they got me jittery. Games like golf (Hotshots Fore, or Outlaw Golf) are more my middle aged speed…
A couple of weeks ago on NPR’s Fresh Air, I heard a review of a Japanese game called Katamari Damacy which sounded right up my alley. I checked some online reviews, watched some video clips, and bought a used copy.
This thing is a BLAST. It’s totally non-violent and really easy to learn. It almost seems more of a video toy than a game. The storyline is that the King of the Cosmos or some such title has inadvertantly destroyed all the stars. He sends you, the Prince of the Cosmos, to Earth to gather up materials to make new stars. You’re given a lumpy sort of sticky ball called a Katamari which you roll around, picking up whatever it rolls over. At first it will only pick up small stuff like thumbtacks,paper clips, nuts but as it gets bigger your scale alters and you can pick up mice, batteries, all sorts of foods (many Japanese!), etc. At each level, you’re given a certain diameter sphere to build before you can go to the next.
The game is totally surrealistic, with no logic to what objects are available in any location. The soundtrack is very catchy, and the 3-d graphics are terrific. My wife said it reminds her of Yellow Submarine. Fairly young kids can learn to play this, but older folks like myself will also find it addicting. Check out : http://www.namco.com/games/katamari_damacy/
There’s a sequel, but this first one will keep me occupied for quite a while.
I’ve been playing the heck out of this since christmas
Guitar Hero…game for the playstation 2
It’s kind of like Dance Dance Revolution…on the screen, there’s a rock star, and he’s playing the guitar. There are notes that come toward you, and you have to be holding the correct fret button and strum in time with the music. The more notes you hit correctly, the higher your multiplier.
(in this picture, the person is about to get the next note wrong, because he’s holding both the red and green fret buttons, and he should only be holding the green one).
It’s not really playing the gutar, but it feels like it! The technology even supports hammer-ons and pull-offs. And get this: hit certain combinations, and you get “star power”..where you literally have to yank the guitar into a neck-up position a la Wayne’s World, and rock out! It has a sensor to actually detect when you’ve yanked the neck up, and doubles your multiplier; your on-screen avatar does cool guitar tricks while you’re in star power mode, playing behind his head, or spinning the guitar around and stuff.
I’ve beaten the game at easy and medium, and am currently working on hard. I’ve spent my hard earned concert money unlocking the Grim Reaper as my lead guitarist..he plays his scythe with strings running down it. Very rock and roll.
Shadowsong server. Two Horde alts (lvl26 undead warlock, lvl 9 orc shaman). Two Alliance alts (lvl 18 night elf hunter, lvl 7 human paladin I started last night)
Oh, now that I think about it, Paul, I think I heard the same review of Katamari Damacy on NPR that you did..but I’d read about it in Wired magazine a couple months ago, so I didn’t pay much attention to the NPR review.
I’m also a WoW head on Teranas server. Spend most of my time on a lvl 48 night elf druid, but I’ve got an orc shaman, undead rogue, dwarf paladin, human mage, amoung others.
My wife plays too, so we can group together and play as a couple.
I’m on Detheroc. Level 45 (almost 46, lol) Tauren Shaman. A friend and I just started a guild, and I put up a forum the other day. No one has posted, yet…
I don’t play often enough to really be active in a guild and stuff..maybe 4-6 hours a week, sometimes none. But I like it..just don’t have the time to devote to it like some folk
I played all the single-player stuff for NWN. It was crazy good. I had a group of friends that started a persistent world, and I designed most of the maps (what a generous friend I am… ), but I never played large-scale multiplayer on that game.
Hey, all right, a game about whiskey!
We’ve always had video games about american pastimes, i.e. football, baseball, etc.
It’s about time they included a Canadian one!
), but I never played large-scale multiplayer on that game.